If you are interested in helping with the development and running costs of Ilkor then you can get involved by making a small donation via PayPal. To learn more about this you can visit our latest blog and / or ilkor.com.

Thank you in advance. :-)

Welcome to the ninth issue of the Norberg bulletin. An important aspect of all Empires is their economy. Incomes and expenses must be balanced or even the largest Empire might fall from glory. In this issue of the Norberg bulletin we'll look at the economical system in Rising Empires as well as the economy of a small Empire.

The bulletin can be read and downloaded at:
Norberg bulletin - Issue 9

We've just blogged a news update on our development progress. If you are interested you can read about it here: http://gadgames.com/blog/2011/09/26/ilkor-brief-update/

Something I have always done in gaming, whether in PBM, PBEM, Mass online games, or solo gaming is to develop the background of my characters and the in-game places they lived, worked and explored. Tolkien is probably the most important author who has subcreated an entire world and its languages. How much one can do is to some extent dependent on the quality and depth of the game itself. This website is as good as anywhere to start.

I try to subcreate in all games I join, like in pbm games like Keys of Bled, and The Known World, both now long inactive, or folded. I have also subcreated backgrounds in modules, especially D&D The Keep on the Borderlands (the link is to Blog on the Borderlands, no connection to me).

This was one of the attractions of Ultima Online. I've copied some links to extant threads that I wrote as subcreations of characters in Ultima Online. This is one: Tyg's Tale. This is another: The Fiskdotter Matriarchy. I also did some subcreation writing in Midgard UK as others have done so in that as yet un-launched game by its new owner Medieval inspirations.

As I flip through Issue # 48 of Paper Mayhem magazine (the May/June 1991 issue), one thing that stands out is the visual variety of the ads for various play by mail games advertised therein.

It is interesting to just flip the pages of various back issues of Paper Mayhem, all these many years after the fact, and take note of the visual impact (or lack thereof) that each ad, or each portion of a given ad, has on me, now.

By and large, ads for PBM games were never in any real danger of winning any awards for artistic greatness. Many of the ads were, in fact, rather crude, or pretty cheesy. But, in spite of those characterizations, I think that that was also a part of the beauty of the PBM genre of gaming.

Because most play by mail gaming companies were relatively small scale affairs, quite often one-man or two-person operations, in-house art departments existed largely in flights of PBM game moderator fancy. PBM moderators had to make do with the artistic skill sets that they either possessed, themselves, or the often limited availability of art talent that was local to each of them. As someone who possesses absolutely zero degree of skill when it comes to drawing, it is easy for me to sympathize with and relate to the position that PBM game moderators of yesteryear all too often found themselves in, when they weighed whether to advertise in one of the various play by mail magazines in publication back then.

The very recent arrival of the creator of Zorphwar and Quest of the Great Jewels on the PlayByMail.Net website is an event worthy of heralding, to be sure. At least, for me it is, anyway. Both himself and the guy that he sold Quest of the Great Jewels, to Rich Van Ollefen, are the equivalent of two of PBM gaming's crown jewels. And to think, we have them both right here at our virtual fingertips.

There are other PBM figures of play by mail legend that are still alive and kicking, to be sure, and it's a great thing that they are still with us. Each one that fades into oblivion, and each one who passes away, take with them their own unique perspective, recollections, and thoughts on things PBM related.

We may not capture all of the PBM Hivemind's thoughts and memories. Indeed, I readily concede that we will never archive the absolute vast majority of creative thought and gaming experience that the play by mail genre has visited upon the human population of planet Earth over the span of its existence.

And, I realize all too well that some who do visit the site here will never register, even as others who drop by stay for a bit, and then depart to pursue other interests, each for their own respective sets of reasons. But, for the time that they do spend here, and notably for the time that they participate in the discussions here, the treasure vault of PBM memories shines and glows all the brighter. What they leave behind, others can happen across at future intervals. For them, the treasure that each of you deposit on this site, with your words and your memories and experiences put onto virtual parchment in the form of forum postings, hold the potential to be a grand find. El Dorado!!

Or is it?

It has been said that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. This site isn't the most visually appealing to the Internet's human eye. It tends to get neglected, almost as if its creative force lies dormant. The site administrator here is certainly not the most pleasant of human personalities to encounter. Earth is a big place. You will find better treatment and more abundant hospitality elsewhere.

In the old play by mail game called Galaxy: Alpha, the one ran by the now-defunct PBM company known as Intergalactic Games, the back history of that game yielded frequent references to ancient, extra-dimensional complexes, series of micro planes, and warp gates of various sorts. This site reminds me of those things, only substantially less interesting, I suppose.

Even still, like those old PBM ads for games that no longer exist, we're still here. Few take notice of us. Fewer still detect any magic here on the site. The greatest security that PBM's El Dorado has is that hardly anyone expends any significant effort searching for it in earnest.

Maybe it doesn't exist, after all. Or, maybe it's not what we originally and subsequently conceived it to be.

I leave it to each of you to discern and to unearth whatever value that this site has to offer, if any.

Once upon a time ago, many were they who caught the PBM Fever. Like polio, this scourge has largely been eradicated from our world. Unlike polio, however, PBM Fever was a good thing.

Spread the contagion. Spread the world. PBM is dead. Long live PBM!!

Bring out yer dead! If play by mail is truly dead, won't you at least help to write its obituary, lest this once worthy beast fade into oblivion beneath the ever-falling sands of time?

Sounds like a movie title doesn't it! :-)

Since we relaunched Gad Games we've had hundreds of ex-managers of Soccer Supremos contact us about the 'good old days', telling us how much they loved the game and many of you asking us to relaunch it. So that is exactly what we are going to do!

Check out our blog: http://gadgames.com/blog/2011/09/15/socc...return-of/

http://soccersupremos.com

By now you should notice the Banner's that Grim has kindly allowed us to put up here. We think they look great and they are the subject of our latest blog: http://gadgames.com/blog/category/ilkor-dark-rising/

We're spending the better part of October migrating off Microsoft SQL Server and onto MongoDB.

http://gadgames.com/blog/2011/09/05/ilkor-database-migration-has-started/

After a couple of years of terrible neglect, esmsworld.net is back online. The site supports both the ESMS and ESMS+ football (soccer) sims, as well as utilities and source code (when available). The forums are open for correspondence, love letters and advice. Registration is free, and so is all the software available for download. Stop by and see us soon!

http://www.esmsworld.net

Dave

The famed Mike Fay conducted what I believe to be one of the longest interviews in play by mail history, with his grand inquisition of Galactic Prisoners game moderator Ed Grandel in issue # 38 of Paper Mayhem magazine.

I never played Galactic Prisoners, back in the day. I was tempted to, though. Hell, I'm still tempted to play it, even now, all these many years later.

In that interview, Ed Grandel said that he designed the game, Galactic Prisoners, "so that the player would feel alone and isolated when he first got into the game." Ed was seeking to simulate the conditions that he would feel, if he were actually placed as an ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) on an alien world.

I don't know what ever became of either Ed Grandel or Galactic Prisoners. All PBM players now appear to be in a world similar to what the Nibor decided the fate of human race should be. We are all prisoners on the alien world of Internet. We're scattered. We're relatively few in number, compared to the count of our postal playing species from the height of postal gaming civilization's apex now past. Much like Galactic Prisoners, our future is now a game of discovery. We aren't necessarily liking all that we discover, however, even though some of what we discover we do like.

If I were to create a new play by mail game, today, then I think that how Ed Grandel approached the design of his game, Galactic Prisoners, would still be good guidance, all these many years later. A lot of postal gaming was about "feel." Not about perfection. Just about "feel."

Many modern incarnations of games seem to lack this very same quality, this "feel" thing. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. They have plenty of click, but click definitely isn't the same thing as "feel."

There's a lot of talk these days about instant gratification in gaming. New games come along, they grab your attention, they fire the imagination, and the fire quickly burns itself out, leaving the game in the ash bin of history. What happened?

Postal games, often referred to as correspondence games across the big Pond of the Atlantic, suffered a host of different maladies, to be sure. But, one thing that many of them got right, perhaps aided by the nature of the beast, itself, which was the postal medium, was pace. The medium lent itself well to allowing the entertainment factor to proceed at a pace that imbued the end product, the game, with longevity of play.

Clicking to kill opposing forces, whether Indians or space aliens, is quite a distinct thing from thinking about how to kill them. When I play Hyborian War, these days, I still spend a lot of time thinking about both what I should do, and about what I think that my dastardly enemies will likely do. That quality of thought aspect of gaming is a byproduct of the game, which is facilitated by the pace of the game, the unfolding of the grand adventure that is the whole game played out over a period of many months.

In the very same issue of Paper Mayhem as the Ed Grandel interview, issue # 38 (the September/October 1989 issue), there is also an article titled, "Playtesting: Orion Nebula Preview." In this article, it's author, Stephen Marte, mentions CompuServe. Thus, the Internet and the pre-Internet technological revolution enveloped play by mail gaming more than two decades ago, at a bare minimum.

It is indisputable that this tsunami of technology has changed the face of gaming, forever. But, has it really conquered the core basics of challenges that inhere in the gaming paradigm of entertainment? Are the new games kings and conquers of the old PBM games, in the areas of feel and pace? Pound for pound, content-wise, which has proven to be the more efficient medium?

I ask, in the interest of rehabilitating the prisoners of modern day gaming. Is there any hope for rehabilitating even a relatively small portion of them back to gaming that flourished under the banner of play by mail?